Articles

28 August 2015

Why Do We Need Online Analytics?

Vladyslav Flaks

CEO OWOX

5

We often hear that question. Even from those, who has
already decided to implement the analytics. Primarily,
we need the answer to determine for ourselves and
the coworkers the main business purpose of analytics and
the justified extend of resources invested in its development.

Based on our experience in analytics implementation
at tens of e-commerce projects, we determined three
key tasks which are solved with analytics.

Revenue increase from visitor

Revenue increase from visitor can be achieved due
to the increase of conversion and an average order calue.
In order to achieve that, we analyze
the part of funnel prior to the
transaction.
there are user actions prior to the order

In order to increase conversions, we determine thin places within the
sales funnel, for example:

Quality improvement of managerial solutions

It is a more complicated in measurement, but nevertheless, important for business, task.

Agreement with coworkers: even when the analytics does not provide new information,
it helps to come to a consensus with the coworkers from the
other departments, explicate your opinion and focus on achieving common goals.
For example, does your IT know how much money you are losing due
to
JavaScript errors?

Time management: business growth requires more decisions, and hence, there
is less time for each separate problem. Analytics helps to obtain
data upon your request so that the quality as a whole is not
compromised due to the lack of time for each problem solving process.
Earlier we needed hours of table data comparison from different sources
in Excel, now we can
built reports in Google Sheets based on a data from Google BigQuery
in a few seconds.

Assignment without control loss: the co workers don’t have your
experience and can make mistakes, which will cost you. By giving them the
correct metrics and visual graphs, you can use your experience and maintain
the control over the process.

Market is changing rather rapidly and old approaches lose their effectiveness.
It is essential to determine any changes in a timely
manner and establish the new direction for the efforts. Based on the historic
data, the value of which is not always immediately obvious, you can
observe what is changing in the behavior of your users.
How fast did you rate the features of different setups and start using the
advantages of mobile marketing?

P.S.: It is essential to remind that the main «disadvantage»
of analytics is the fact that it cannot make a decision for you. Analytics
is not self-sufficient and is not a magic bullet. Only your
readiness to practically use and apply new knowledge determines the
value that your business obtains.